Behive Table Lamp

behive table lamp

The perfect blend of formal purity and technological research, Behive is a new table lamp designed by Werner Aisslinger in his first collaboration with Foscarini. In Behive, light is the decorative element defining the body with an animating graphic outline that brings it to life. When it is switched off, Behive resembles a stylish modern sculpture, but when it is switched on, it produces a soft and enveloping light that is reflected onto the surface it rests on and diffused upwards. Dimmer included.

The name "Behive" (a shortening of "beehive") describes the shape and horizontal striped pattern of the white diffuser and its emanating warm, soft light. Deceptively simple and regular in appearance, the white rings of Behive are the result of a highly complex collaborative engineering process and materials research for which Foscarini is so well known. Behive is a truly luminous sculpture, a perfect architecture of horizontal slits with a charming, poetic effect. It denotes a winning and recognizable personality, destined to become a classic.

Riccardo Olivieri set up Foscarini Spa in Murano in 1981. Two years later, they debuted their catalog, with lamps from Carlo Urbinati and Allesandro Vecchiato, who would become the company’s managers by 1988. Eventually these new owners would move the company off the island and into Venice, as well as transition Foscarini from a glassworks shop to a major design competitor. They had already begun working with external designers in 1985, but their first success came in 1990 with Rodolfo Dordoni’s “Lumiere.” Most all lighting projects were made of glass until 1993, at which point the Havana lamp primarily used polyethylene, making it lighter, more cost-effective, and able to be used indoors and outdoors. It now resides in the MoMA in New York. Other successful lamps would come to define the company, such as the “Mite & Tite” series by Marc Sadler in 2000 (which earned a Compasso d’oro), Patricia Urquiola’s 2005 “Caboche,” and Marc Sadler’s signature lamp "Twiggy."